Kuala Lumpur offers to send 14 RI migrants to 3rd country
Kuala Lumpur offers to send 14 RI migrants to 3rd country
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters): Malaysia is willing to arrange for the passage to a third country for 14 Indonesian immigrants holed up in a U.N. refugee agency if they make a request for it, the national Bernama news agency reported yesterday.
It quoted Deputy Home Minister Mohammed Tajol Rosli Ghazali, who told reporters in northern Ipoh town that the group has not contacted him so far.
The Indonesians crashed a lorry through the gate of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) compound near the center of Kuala Lumpur on Monday.
They have said they are seeking political asylum and are refugees from Aceh province on Indonesia's Sumatra island, where a separatist revolt peaked in the early 1990s.
"The UNHCR has requested to see me but I have asked them to write a letter instead stating what they want, and so far I have not received the letter from them," the Malaysian minister was quoted as saying.
Officials at the UNHCR and a spokesman for an Acehnese group could not be reached for comment on Saturday.
Malaysia has agreed to grant the UNHCR time to determine if the Indonesians are political refugees. But it has said it considers the Indonesians illegal immigrants who were to be deported.
Malaysia has in the past refused to grant Acehnese immigrants political asylum but has quietly given some of them residency status, human rights advocates said. Kuala Lumpur deported more than 500 Acehnese last week.
Authorities said eight immigrants and a policeman died during the deportation exercise.
Tajol Rosli said the government had sent back 27,500 illegal Indonesian immigrants in the first quarter of this year compared with 38,500 for the whole of last year.
"If carried out consistently, the government is confident that by the end of the year 100,000 Indonesian illegal immigrants would have been repatriated," he said.
Asia's financial crisis has thrown the spotlight on illegal immigrants, as countries struggle with rising unemployment among their own population. During the boom years, many rapidly developing economies imported labor from their neighbors.